Experi-Mental
by selena1234
Summary: One day, when Harry was five, the Dursleys got a letter in their mail from a nearby science facility, claiming that they were looking for willing people to be experimented on. From that day forward, Harry Potter had been injected with all sorts of odd remedies, giving him some odd powers and weaknesses. Year 1 at Hogwarts, well, he might be worse at hiding these than he thought.
1. Bleeding at Random

**I've been looking forward to writing this for a few weeks now. This story is going to be updated on Thursdays around 1-2 Eastern US time, provided that I start writing at 12. **

**Eeeeee :D**

**XxXxX**

Harry had awoken that particular morning, feeling like something was wrong. Something bad was going to happen that day.

Harry James Potter, aged four - wait, no. Aged 5. That's right, it was his birthday. He had sat up that morning, feeling odd. He stretched and counted down the seconds. Three, two, _Knock, knock, knock._

"Get up!" Called the harsh voice of Aunt Petunia. Harry had groaned and he had gotten out of his little cupboard, and he had gone to make breakfast.

It wasn't different from any other morning to his immediate attention, but something had still felt... off.

Harry, in the present, snorted. Something had been very off indeed.

Past Harry had gone through his regular routine, making breakfast while sneaking what he could. He had placed the breakfast on the table just as Uncle Vernon and Dudley bounded down the stairs to get to their food.

Nothing had looked off.

Until the Mail came.

As soon as the little shwooop of the Mail going through the slot sounded, Vernon had yelled, "Harry! Get the Mail!" Despite the fact that Harry had been in the same room as Vernon.

Harry walked off into the living room and he had stopped in his tracks. Sitting there had been a vibrant green envelope.

Who could that be from?! He had wondered.

Present Harry laughed aloud as he rolled over on his bed, attempting not to agitate his arm. That letter had changed everything.

Past Harry ran to get the mail before Vernon noticed that it was taking Harry longer than usual. He didn't touch the green letter with his flesh; he had picked it up with the other letters and he had deposited the mail on the table, the green letter mocking him from the very top.

Vernon's face went red when he saw it and he had turned to Harry. "WHAT IS THIS!?" He had bellowed. "DID YOU TURN MY MAIL FUNKY COLORS YOU FREAK!?" Harry had shook his head vehemently.

"It was like that when I grabbed it, sir." Harry had said. Vernon didn't calm down immediately, Present Harry recalled, but he certainly hadn't hit Harry or anything.

Vernon had reached over and he had picked up the letter. What was going through the man's mind, Harry couldn't say, but whatever it had been, it wasn't good.

He had opened the letter slowly, as if dreading the insides of the letter. The actual letter itself was a shiny silver with dark green writing on it.

Thankfully, Vernon had read the letter aloud, otherwise Harry wouldn't have known its contents.

_Dear residents of Number Four Privet Drive,_ present-Harry recalled it saying.

_My name is Doctor Yaxley from the nearby Slythepure Labratory, privately funded by the Malfoy family, and we have been searching for people to participate in the Dark Magic project. Please, don't be alarmed by the name; it has nothing to do with magic, we assure you! It was simply the name that the incompitent Doctor Yowle had come up with. We are looking for a child willing to be shot with needles and tested on, but it has to be a child. We will be willing to pay you up to ten thousand pounds a year for this, and we will keep him during the time he would normally go to school and return him for the summers, so long as you tell us things that happen to the child while he is away from our lab. _

_If you do decide to accept this oppertunity, please send the child to the Slythepure labratory before the school year starts and we will send the payment to you. _

_Please and thank you for your time,_

_Doctor Yaxley._

The letter had ended there.

Harry had gulped, and he had started to head to his cupboard.

"You better be packing boy!" Vernon had said, laughing at his own joke.

Present Harry rolled over again, sighing. He could feel his blood boiling and chilling again, over and over. It itched, and it felt horrible, and Harry wanted to go home.

But he couldn't go home.

There was no _home_ to go to. He didn't consider that horrible place his _home_ when they willingly gave him up to these people. They had seemed nice enough at the start; all pleasent and "Would you like some tea, Mrs. Dursley?" and "Can I get you a biscuit, Mr. Dursley?" Both had refused and drove off, of course, leaving Harry in the large, cold labratory with the two doctors.

As soon as the Dursleys had left, they had turned on Harry with the coldest smile he had ever seen. The showed him his room, very large, very airy and the bed had been larger than the Dursley's master bed. They had smiled coldly at him and one had said, "You may have this bed so long as you participate with the experiments, Harry!" Harry had gaped; surely they couldn't be that bad if he got to sleep _there!_

Oh, it was that bad and much more.

Their first act was to whip out a wand and run diagnostic tests on him. _No magic my arse._

Then they had injected him with some odd, bright red liquid which was currently making his blood boil. Nearly instantly after he had been injected, his arm had ripped open, from his elbow to his wrist. It's not like they cut him or anything, but it was suddenly... there.

And it hadn't hurt at all, either, which Harry had found odd. Of course, touching it hurt like hell, but the act of getting his arm torn open hadn't hurt.

It hadn't lasted long at all, either. Ten minutes at most and it sealed up again, leaving no mark. There was no sign that his arm had ripped itsself open at all, other than the blood everywhere.

Neither doctor had bothered to help Harry once his arm ripped open, they had simply started taking notes.

Present Harry flipped over in his bed again. No, his arm was agitated at the minute because it had ripped open again.

It seemed like this was to become a regular occurance.

Harry sighed in relief once he felt the telltale feather-like feeling of it sealing itsself again.

He was learning to sense his body for these things, and it wasn't just his arm that would rip open. It could happen anywhere for any length of time, and he always felt like a hot iron was being pressed against the offended area.

They had spent the rest of the day documenting the occurences, where they were, how long they lasted and how long there was between them. Between them, they had asked Harry questions and he questioned them in turn, asking them about Magic. They were happy to explain about the Magical world and how they both went to a school called Hogwarts. Other than the experiments, they seemed pretty nice.

For now.

Harry sighed and tried to keep himself still. He was sure that these were going to be a long couple of years before he got to go to Hogwarts.

XxXxX

**There you go. Chapter 1 complete. **

**I rather like this first chapter; the flipping back and forth between past and present was actually pretty fun to write, but it was only for this chapter. I promise, more fun experiments are to be conducted next chapter. I think we'll spend a good 5 chapters about Harry growing up like that and then he'll go to Hogwarts. You'll see most of the results in scenarios at Hogwarts.**

**That being said, Poll time!**

**Gryffindor or Slytherin?**


	2. Tongues with Creatures

**I apologize for, ya know, not updating when I said I would because I'm on vacation right now! **

**Sorry ;)**

**XxXxX**

Yaxley and Yowle were both sitting in the main room, around the fire. Both had a half-empty glass of brandy and Yaxley was in his pajamas.

"I think it was pretty nice of the Dark Lord, all things considering, to allow us to set this up before his downfall." Yaxley said, swirling his drink. "I mean, I know that he wants us to find something useful for him and all, which benefits him, but I mean, you know, this is pretty fun."

"He's the Boy Who Lived, Yaxley." Yowle said, taking a sip from his drink. "Surely he would kill us if he found out!"

"Wait-wait-wait!" Yaxley said, trying to not choke on his drink. "He's the Boy Who Lived?"

"Yeah, didn't you know?"

"What!? Totally shocked!"

They clinked their drink together and laughed.

XxXxX

"Wakey-wakey!" Harry heard. Slowly, he blinked awake. In front of him was Doctor Yaxley, smiling at him. It was a very creepy smile.

Harry was, by this point, assuming that they didn't mean him ill will, they simply just did not smile. Like, at all. Ever.

He streched, easing out all of the kinks from sleep. Harry expected many of them, but he surprisingly had no aches from the night before, which was a first. The bed was very soft, if a little blood-soaked now.

Harry stood and smiled sheepishly at the two. Yowle examined the blood covering him and the bed, Yaxley documented it on a piece of parchment.

After a minute or so, Yowle handed Harry his wand.

"Point to the bed," He instructed, smiling. "And say, clearly _Scourgify_."

"Scourgify!" Harry said, and the bed - as well as him - was clean of all blood. He smiled widely and gleefully, handing the wand back. "That's brilliant!"

"Of course it is! Wizards are much better than muggles, Harry." Yowle said, sliding the wand back up his sleeve. "Because we can do _so much more _than they can."

Harry nodded and followed the two out of his room and to the breakfast room, where, sitting there, were some scrambled eggs and bacon.

The smile fell off of his face, and he frowned. Did they not expect him to make them breakfast? Did he not have to serve them like he had for _them_?

The two sat on opposite ends of the small table, the third table seat unfilled. There was food on the plate - they expected him to eat with them?

Well, of course, they had allowed him to do so the night before at dinner, but the Durleys had let him do so once a week as well.

Resigning to his fate, Harry sighed and stood by the wall.

Yowle was the first to notice.

"Harry? What are you doing? Come and eat!"

Harry's eyebrows raised in surprise. "Why? Don't... Don't I have to serve you and pick up your dishes like I did for th... the Dursleys?"

Yaxley dropped his fork in surprise. "Merlin, Harry, why would you have to do that?"

Harry shrugged. "I dunno." He then bounded forward, the smile back on his face, and he happily dug into the meal offered to him.

Once all three of them were done eating, they pulled out another syringe and they injected him with the bright green liquid inside.

"We'll do this every morning after breakfast." Yaxley said, smiling as he healed Harry's arm.

A sharp crack filled the room and standing there was a weird creature cleaning up their breakfast. Harry stared at him - her - it? - in awe.

"Harry, this is Vipty, the House Elf."

"_Daumur!_" Harry said, smiling. His eyes then went wide as he realized what he had said, and his hands flew to cover his mouth. _"Mae di A neurma pia? Mae ai A piae?!"_

"Harry, Harry!" Yaxley said, kneeling by him, sensing that he was about to have a panic attack or something similar. "Calm down! We'll figure out what it is!" He turned to Yowle. "_Right,_ Saeth?"

"Yes! We'll fix it, Harry!"

Vipty bowed to the three before leaving the room.

"I don't want it to be fixed la- oh hey. English."

Yowle looked at Harry in confusion. What had changed?

"The House Elf." Yowle said, suddenly understanding, running to take the notes. "It was the presence of the House Elf!"

"So is it just House Elves or all creatures?" Yaxley wondered, patting Harry on the back before standing up, going to glance at their notes.

"All magic creatures." Harry said without thinkng.

Yaxley wrote it down, before glancing curiously at the boy. "How do you know?"

"I... I don't know." Harry said, rubbing his foot on the ground. "I just... do."

"That's useful - put it down."

Harry smiled, glad to be of help.

XxXxX

**Yup, so there we go.**


	3. Passage of Time

By the time Harry was ten, he was pretty used to absolutely anything weird that might happen to him.

Harry was more often than not dropped off with them for his birthday on onward, so they liked to celibrate it. They had been surprised, of course, when Harry had never celibrated his birthday before.

So they made even more of a point to celibrate it from that first year on.

Their version of "celibrating" was truly just a small cake and a few presents, plus no new injections that day, but it was still more than Harry had ever recieved before.

And, in turn, the two wizards explained to Harry more and more about the Wizarding World, more about how his parents died, about them in general, and about the Dark Lord.

They explained to Harry about the Dark Lord from their own perspective; what they both thought about him and in turn, Harry told them about what he thought of Voldemort from their impressions.

"He doesn't seem to be _evil_ so much as _hateful_." Harry had said, frowning. "He just.. he seems like he wants _some_ sort of goal - he wants power some how or another. Though, by your descriptions, he _has_ power, and he knows it, he just wants _more,_ which is stupid if you ask me. And you have asked me. He sounds like he made some wrong choices and he doesn't know how to fix those choices so he just kind of rolls with it." Harry shrugged. "I dunno. I can't really be mad at him for killing my parents, either, 'cause I didn't exactly know them."

That had been at age 7. From there on, they took Halloween off as well. It was a day for Mourning the lost; both Harry's parents, and Voldemort. Despite how _crazy_ he seemed, he truly wanted to make them stronger; he had wanted to make the world a Better place, despite his _darker_ methods. The loss of a leader; the loss of parents.

XxXxX

And finally, the day arrived that Harry's letter arrived. He had been at 'home' when he recieved it, so, of course, the Dursleys tossed him straight out the door.

It was raining that day, too. With chattering teeth, Harry pulled the sides of thread-bare oversized shirt around him more like a jacket, and he ran up to the science facility. It was a good five minute drive, so it took him about half an hour to get there. He took the key from the bottom of his shoe - recieved on his 8th birthday - and he unlocked the front door. Quickly, he hightailed it up to his bedroom and he changed his clothes. Ugh, but he was still _so cold._ The letter was now waterstained, sadly, so he knew that it would be much harder to read.

"Vipty!" He said. _Pop_ went the house elf. Hopefully, the random language he was going to speak could be understood by elves. _"Can you make me some hot chocolate?"_ he asked in what he thought might have been parseltongue.

Evidently it was not, because Vipty nodded and came back with some hot chocolate.

He gratefully took it and sipped, trying to not burn his tongue. The letter was no longer waterstained, as his bed was charmed to clean anything liquid that touched it. That included Harry, so he was dry, and the letter.

Carefully, he set the glass on his side table and he opened the letter.

_Dear Mister _blah, _I am the_ blah _from the _blah _please send your letter by _blah, _signed _blah.

Yeah, it was his Hogwarts Acceptance Letter. He smiled widely and ran to go tell Yaxley or Yowle or someone. He found them brewing a potion in the Lab in the basement. Both had said before that neither were good with potions, so they had been taking established recipies from a very old potions textbook and doing them normally. _That_ was how they got their results, considering most ingrediants in the book were nearly unreadable, they were forced to compromise and make guesses.

"Harry!" Yowle said. "What are you doing here so early? Your birthday isn't for another four days."

"I know! But I got this!" He threw his letter at Yowle. He caught it effortlessly -_ he dropped it twice -_ and he read it quickly.

Once he finished reading the letter, he looked up at Harry and smiled widly. "I knew you'd be accepted! Did you decide which house you wanted to be in? Oh, we can go to Diagon Alley on your birthday, get you a nice treat perhaps - and of course we'd get you a broom - would you want an owl? Would you change languages near owls? Do they count as magic creatures? Oh, so many _questions!_" Yowle paced back and forth, ignoring his potion.

Yaxley reached over and added a lacewing fly. The potion turned green and puffed up.

Harry scrunched his nose at the smell it produced. There was a reason he hated to come down to the Potions Lab. It was due to the fact that sometimes, he didn't_ want_ to know what they injected into him.

"I promise I'll write every day when I'm there and I'll tell you about some of the results from some of the other... _things_ you put into my bloodstream." Most of them hadn't worked right away - they assumed that all of them had specific triggers that they'll need to test outside of the Facility. "If that's what you're worried about. Also, I'll come back here for summers considering that the Dursleys kind of kicked me out."

"They did _What?_" the two exlaimed in unison.

"Yeah, something about me being a _no good hooligan like my no good parents."_ Harry shrugged. "Of course, you two won't let me swear so I toned it down a bit.

Yaxley rolled his eyes. "Just go and reply to her letter, Harry."

"'Kay."

"We'll go tomorrow if you're up to it, Harry."

XxXxX

**I'm updating the poll from S or G to S and R, for the record.**

**A review from Werewolf of Suburbia made me kind of want to write a Ravenclaw Harry, considering I have never done so before. It would make more sense in this story for him to decide between Raven and Slyth as opposed to Gryff and Slyth, given the circumstances. **

**So far, we have Raven: 1, Undecided: 2, Slyth: 0.**

**If I'm allowed to vote, make that S: 1**

**;)**


	4. H8tred

**I had a half day today.**

**Expect updates.**

_**All**_** of the updates.**

**XxXxX**

On Harry's birthday, the two took him to Diagon Alley.

They made sure to keep him away from the crowds - or to at least _hide_ him when they got near.

Harry understood - he and the two Death Eaters both disliked crowds and Harry wanted nothing to do with his fame.

However, it was simply not meant to be.

When they got Harry's robes, another kid was in there - a child that the two wizards recognized as a Malfoy. Yaxley tapped Harry's shouder twice and gave him a tiny shove - a sign that he should make friends with this boy.

Draco looked over at the door as it opened, glancing at the three that entered. Yaxley and Yowle both he recognized - they had visited his father a few times. The black haired kid with them he didn't recognize. He knew that neither of them had offspring - Merlin forbid that either of _them_ reproduce - and only within the confines of his mind would he admit the same for the Crabbe and Goyle families.

Back to the black haired kid. He was wearing nicer robes, so he must be Halfblood or up. He's with two Death Eaters so that rules out Halfblood.

But Draco also didn't _recognize_ the kid - does that make him foreign? Or perhaps from a _light_ family?

The former is probably the correct one - but again, he doesn't look foreign. At all.

So, Draco wondered the allignment of this kid.

What would two known Death Eaters be doing with a light family's kid, he wondered.

The boy trotted up to beside him, smiling, as Madame Malkin went to work on his robes as well.

"Hello," Draco said, glancing at the boy. He was a little smaller than Draco himself was, and a bit thinner, too, but not by horribly much. His hair was _ungodly_ messy - someone needs to take a comb to that mess! Or, better yet, a cutting hex.

Yes, upon closer, the boy's clothes were higher material, but a little worn. The robes he was getting, too, were to be of higher caliber. That meant that it would take more time, which meant that Draco had more time to get answers from him.

"Hello!" He responded, cheery and bright. He seemed excited - _too_ excited for a pureblood. No pureblood would be so excited to go to Diagon Alley, because all of them had been before. Even the light families.

Perhaps he had been orphaned at a young age and raised amungst the muggles? But no, Draco had asked before when he was younger about that, and no wizarding child would be _given_ to a muggle family if other arrangements could be made. Then again, on the other hand, he was with Yaxley and Yowle. They're both pureblood, both wizards, and again, on the other side, they would have taken him to Diagon Alley before.

_So... what?_

"Are you going to Hogwarts this year as well?" He asked, raising an eyebrow.

The boy nodded, smiling even wider. "I'm so excited to go. They've-" he nodded to the two Death Eaters, "told me so much about the castle and I'm so excited to go! Plus I've never been to Diagon Alley before, and, oh _god_ I'm so _exited!_"

So that was it. He was raised muggle by two purebloods.

How _pitiful._

"Well, what is your name? I am Draco Malfoy, of course." Draco made sure to keep most of the disdain out of his voice.

"Oh, I'm Harp." His face screwed up in confusion, and the two by the door pulled out a note book. "Herpes."

Draco's eyebrows went up, and his eyes wide in surprise. "Your name is _what?_"

"Harmony." The boy said, looking to the two Death Eaters for help. They had started to laugh a little bit. "Habitude. Hallucinogenics. _Hippotomonstrosisquipidaliophobia _god, _MERLIN,_ You two, stop _laughing _and _help me!_"

Sure enough, the two had dissolved into hysterics.

Yowle managed to stop laughing enough to choke out, "Ha- Harry! He's Harry Potter!"

Draco gaped at the boy - the _boy-who-lived_ standing _right next to him._ "You're Harry Potter!" He exclaimed. "Well," He schooled his expression and cleared his throat. "I'm Draco Malfoy, heir of the Malfoy family line. Soon, Potter, you'll learn that _some_ families are better than others - I can help you there." He held out his hand, smiling slightly at the boy.

Harry glanced at his hand, and smiled back. "Well, I'd be glad to shake your hand but, uh, I kinda can't move."

"Is it too tight?" Madame Malkin asked. "My mistake, Harry, dear." She waved her wand and it instantly sagged. Harry reached out, over Madame Malkin, and he shook Draco's waiting hand.

"Well, I hope we can be good friends, Draco!"

Draco nodded, and smirked. "So, Harry, what do you think of the Chudley Cannons?"

"Oh, they're just _awful-"_

XxXxX

**Short snippet for word count (1):**

**Harry's Grades; alternately titled **_**I hate the number 8.**_

"Hey!" Harry called out, walking into the door of number 4 Privet Drive, kicking off his _perfectly clean shoes,_ planning on cleaning the floor where they are anyways. In his hand was his first test of the new school year - he had just turned 8.

The Dursleys, thankfully, had started treating him a little bit better once they got a stipend for sending Harry away every summer, on top of the money they got for taking care of him full time.

However, Harry had a problem. He had been told to get worse grades than Dudley, and in his hand is a test graded with an 88.

When he gave it to Vernon, he glanced angrily at the young boy and pointed to the cupboard.

The second test that year, too, was an 88, despite the fact that the test only had ten questions on it.

The third, as well, was labled with a red 88 on the top.

Harry, by the fifth test, had realized that something was up. 88s on everything, despite the number of questions in total, right or wrong.

Ten questions and all of them wrong? 88.

Five hundred questions and none of them wrong? 88.

As soon as he noticed it, Harry knew it was time to start experimenting.

No matter _how _wrong the answer was, he could get nothing more or less than an 88.

Math test with a question of 4 times 7? The Spanish Inquisition. Bravo, Well done, Harry. 88.

Even tests that didn't grade out of 100 points, like essays - which graded 0 to 9 - he recieved an 8 on and had an 88 go in the grade book. 8s for everyone else gave them 93s.

Eventually, Harry decided that messing around like that was boring, so he handed in blank tests.

He still got an 88.

At that point, he was seeing the number eight on everything, and it was freaking him out.

He spent more time than usual in his cupboard because he was not _physically able_ to get grades less than 88.

It may or may not have been due to the fact that when Vernon confronted Harry about the issue, he had said something along the lines of, "Well, if you want me to stop doing better than Dudley, make him work harder."

Do you know what cupboards are infested with?

Spiders.

Spiders have 8 eyes.

He was seeing the number _everywhere._

He even got a letter from Yowle about how he found _8_ sickles on the street one day.

Yaxley got _eight_ new potion ingredients.

It was settled then, by that Christmas; Harry _hated _the number 8.

XxXxX

**And thus starts an overdone friendship that **_**won't **_**result in Harry's placement in Slytherin. (For once)**


	5. Bubbles

And then finally, the day arrived where Harry could finally go to Hogwarts.  
Like any other day, he took his shot, and he ate breakfast with the two Death Eating Scientists.

They had bought in Diagon Alley a box with which they could send items to each other – Harry had diligently promised to take his shots every morning after he awoke and to take notes and send it with them.

It was all sorts of expensive, but Harry was sure that it would be worth it. Hopefully. If not, he could work it off in about ten years once he graduated.  
They didn't bother with farewells until they had gotten to King's Cross station, and they hadn't bothered to make it a tear-filled occasion, considering that they'd be conversing more often than not anyways.

Neither Death Eater had a job to do outside of making botched potions for Harry, and Harry, though he would have his lessons, probably wouldn't bother with a sport or club. There was no exact kind of pattern to the random openings of his arms, so he didn't want to get blood everywhere. He knew that he could easily use scourgify but there was no reason to just avoid the issue altogether.

On that matter, he had to be extra careful to not alert anyone to his little… oddities while he was there, too, lest Dumbledore heed wind to his doings.

Back to the train. Harry got on earlier in the morning than most others. Once had gotten his shot, there was no reason for them to stay at the Lab, so they decided to just take Harry to the station early. The two had also been intelligent enough to spell Harry's robes to vanish the liquid that were to touch it. Not only would it come in handy when preventing possible enemies from attacking him, but it would also prevent some of the whole blood issues as well.

Again, back to the train. He grabbed a compartment and he sat in it, reading for a good two hours before he heard something other than his own breathing in the train. Perhaps another early riser, who had nothing better to do? He doubted it. He did nothing.

Another hour passed in silence before he heard voices. Apparently it was closing in on ten A.M., and more people had started to arrive.

And yet, he still did nothing. He sat there and he read while waiting. Sure enough, the one he was waiting for arrived nearing ten thirty, and Harry had finished his book. He didn't like to read too often, but it was just too good of an opportunity to pass up, reading about supposedly dangerous potion reactions that he once had injected into his bloodstream. The door slid open, and the person sat down across from him.  
Draco Lucius Malfoy, aged 11. Birthday of June fifth.

Woah where did that come from?

Harry pulled out a piece of parchment and wrote down - _Draco entered my compartment, I instantly knew his birthday. June 5th, am I right?_

Pulling out the instant box, Harry made quick haste to send the note onwards to his scientists.

"Hey Potter, what are you sending?" Draco asked, recognizing the box for what it was.

"Just a letter to my -" What exactly were they? They were his... scientists? Doctors? Weren't doctors supposed to heal you when things were wrong? Not... whatever it was that Yaxley and Yowle did to him. "...Caretakers?" Was that appropriate? Would they let him call them that?

Shrugging, he checked the box for a response. Inside was an agenda. Oh, of course! He had forgotten his agenda!

They agreed that Harry should keep his own notes on his ailments and the names of each particular potion he was injected with each day, how could he have forgotten his agenda!

Smiling manically, Harry wrote the morning's potion - _Caesar IV - _in the top of the day's date, the time he took it - _7:30_am - and that he recognized birthdays now.

Draco rolled his eyes. "If you keep being so bookish, Potter, you're going to end up in Ravenclaw."

Harry glanced up. "And what's the matter with that?"

Draco huffed indignantly. "It's just a ruddy house, that's all." He crossed his arms. "Everyone knows that Slytherin is far superior."

Harry rolled his eyes this time. "Whatever you say, Draco. Hey, speaking of names," Harry put his agenda and quill aside. "Why do you keep calling me Potter?"

Draco started to speak and then froze, as if he was unsure about the answer. "Would you prefer that I call you Harry?"

"Yes." Harry said, nodding, as if agreeing with himself.

"Fine then, Harry. Slytherin is a superior house to the Ravenclaw you will end up being in if you keep that up."

Harry laughed. "Better Ravenclaw than Gryffindor, am I right?" He asked, mocking a previous conversation they had at Diagon Alley.

"Damn straight," Draco agreed.

"Excuse me, has anyone around here seen a Toad?" a girl said from the doorway.

"Nope," Harry said, nodding again, as if agreeing with himself once more.

"No, we have not."

"God dammit-" Harry began, blood beginning to drip from the bridge of his nose. "At least it's not my arm this time."

The girl in the doorway seemed incredibly startled. "Are you okay?"

Harry rolled his eyes. "I'm fine. It happens all the time. It'll pass." Harry pulled out his wand, preparing to scourgify the blood once it stopped bleeding.

"Oh, you're going to do magic? I've practiced at ho-"

"-me a lot, yes," Draco interrupted her, "We know how the degree for underage magical restriction is faulty and it doesn't include the small span between retrieving the letter-" Harry took this time to scourgify himself while she was distracted. "-and actually going to Hogwarts. Congradulations, _mudblood_, you're starting on the same footing as the rest of us. Now _leave_."

Shocked, she slammed the door closed and continued on her way.

"That was a little bit harsh, don't you think?" Harry said, feeling his nose to make sure it didn't scar like it usually didn't. He paused to jot it down in his agenda.

"She's a mudblood! Uneducated in the ways of our culture and magic and I doubt she'll bother to integrate herself into our society and will, instead, preach about how it needs to change to suit her ideas!"

"Okay, then, _Lucius_," Harry said, smirking.

"I'm not Lucius, I'm Draco, remember?"

Harry rolled his eyes. "Funny you should mention that, cause your tirade sounded quite a lot like your father's wording and not yours."

They sat in tense silence until Harry stuck his tongue out at Draco, and the world was right again.

XxXxX

**Short Snippet (2)**

**Alternate Title: Flusterbubbles. **

It was a week before Harry would leave for Hogwarts.

Yaxley and Yowle asked Harry to sit down so that they could have a _talk_.

"Harry, you're going off to a boarding school soon,"

"Yeah, and I'm super excited!" Harry interrupted, bouncing in his chair.

Yowle sighed and continued. "There are a lot of older people in the school at any given time, so we thought we should have a _talk_ with you, so you might understand a bit better some of the things you'll be hearing about while you're there."

"Okay, like what?" Harry asked.

"Well, when two people like each other very much, they... ehm..." Yowle cleared his throat and began to explain.

Harry's face lit up like a fireplace and with a resounding _pop,_ a small, rainbow bubble escaped his mouth. Yowle froze.

"Wait, Yowle, was that-"

"A bubble?"

"It's not-" _pop_ "funny!"

"Wait, wait, wait, Yaxley, go into extreme detail!"

Yaxley did as was told and Harry's face continued to redden. The more flustered and emabrassed he got, the worse the bubbles became, both larger and more frequent.

Yaxley was in the middle of explaining when Yowle could take the humorous sight no longer, and he began to laugh. Yaxley too, joined, and the bubbles worsened as Harry tried to get them to stop laughing.

It wasn't funny. Not at all.


	6. Sleeplessness

"Mr. Potter! Pay attention!" Groggily, Harry picked his head off of his desk and he attempted to pay attention to McGonagall. It wasn't his fault that his wack abilities kept him up all night, _honestly_!

He took out his agenda briefly to add under the day's date _\- September 10th _\- that the previous day's potion refused to let him sleep. He just couldn't, he couldn't do it last night.

Last night was a full moon, he circled that much. But other than the previous night being a full moon, he couldn't quite pinpoint _why_ he physically was unable to sleep.

Shaking his head, hoping to wake him up some more, he continued to jot down notes.

Nine days in and he still didn't have very many friends.

It might have something to do with the fact that the first day, the entire dorm went around introducing themselves to each other and Harry began to bleed all over everything.

No, that probably wasn't it.

Might it have to do with the fact that he got flustered about bleeding all over everything and thus he started sprouting bubbles?

Nah, probably not that either.

"_Look at him over there,"_ he heard one of his classmates whisper, "_He's a mess. I bet you he's gonna bleed all over McGonagall's desks and she'll have him for detention!" _

Considering that he'd felt an impending bleed-spree all morning, she probably wasn't wrong.

Harry rubbed his eyes and continued to try to listen to what McGonagall was talking about, but it was useless.

Had his hearing increased?

Curiously, he tipped his head to the side and took out his agenda. _In McGonagall's, increased hearing? Notes: After full moon, sleep deprived, cause unknown? _He glanced at the morning's potion - _Arcana_ \- and sighed. A headache was beginning to form, he could feel it.

Potions was right after transfiguration.

"Today you shall all be making a blood replenisher." Professor Snape waved his wand and the instructions were on the board. After the third lesson, Harry had realized that not all instructions were on the board - you had to check your book as well, to get the minor details. So Harry pulled out his book and double checked. Yep, add the nettles after taking the cauldron off the fire. Right there, plain text.

Despite his sleep-deprived state, he managed to get to the simmer stage of the potion, rather perfectly, if he said so himself.

And he did.

However, as he went to add that last ingredient, the feeling he'd been trying to pinpoint all day came in full force. With a violent tug, he yanked his now-bleeding hand from over the cauldron, but it was rather too late.

The potion exploded.

XxXxX

He awoke in the Infirmary, which really, was not that surprising.

"What did you do, you stupid, stupid boy?" Professor Snape said, trying desparately to stop the blood from flowing out of his hand. "I was paying attention to you especially, Potter. You seemed so interested in this potion. How did you mess it up? And when did you get this wound? Why didn't you bring it to my attention that you hurt yourself, you _idiotic _child."

"It happens, Sir." Harry said. Professor Snape jumped violently, as he hadn't been paying attention to Harry enough to realize he was awake. "These wounds just kind of... open up."

Fury lit his eyes. "You have old wounds that _continue_ to re-open? How long have you had this wound? Why does it refuse to seal itself?" Harry cocked his head in confusion before he realized what the Professor meant.

"No, sir! They're not old wounds that I recieved at all. Er, where should I... begin, uh..."

Professor Snape sat back in his chair to pinch the bridge of his nose, before he realized that in doing so, he allowed Harry's wound to bleed all over Madam Pomfery's floor again. He quickly sat back forward to hold the wound closed.

"Begin with why magic seems to not be able to close the wound."

"Er, see, that's also, uh, part of the story, Sir."

"Now that you're awake, you can hold your own hand, I assume?" Harry nodded and did as he was told. "Good." He leaned back and started massaging his temples. "Start with the beginning."

Harry did so, leaving out no details. While Yowle and Yaxley had told him to not tell Dumbledore if he could help it, they also made careful notice about how Severus Snape was one of _them_, and could be trusted. If someone had to know, make sure it was Snape.

Severus sighed. Deeply. With many, many layers of frustration.

"So you're telling me, Potter, that you have just _allowed_ these two _known Death Eaters_ to willingly _inject you with unknown substances_ for nearly _seven years now?_"

Harry paused to count - 5, 6, 7, "Yeah, that's about right. But, I mean, they did ask if I wanted to know what it was." Harry paused to pull out his agenda, handing it to the professor. "They do name them, though! I help! It's not like them being horrible known Death Eaters have stopped them from treating me better than my Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon ever did."

Professor Snape sent a sharp glance at Harry for those words before glancing back down to the Agenda, checking each date with the name and the side effects.

"You're saying that this has been normal - randomly bleeding - for seven years."

Harry shrugged. "You kinda get used to it."

Professor Snape set the Agenda back down on the bed and pinched the bridge of his nose, desparately attempting to fight off the impending headache. "We're going to see Headmaster Dumble-"

"_No._"

Professor Snape jumped at the vehemence in his voice. "No?"

"I will _not_ see Headmaster Dumbledore about this, Professor! He doesn't need to know."

"As Headmaster, Potter, it's important that he _knows_ things as important as-"

"As Headmaster, _Professor_, it's important that he knows about dangerous things in his school, things that may provide issues or that disrupt the harmony of the students. I am doing _just fine_ on my own. The only reason you got to know is because you were pre-approved by my -" what word had he used again? Oh yeah - "Caretakers. He was not. I don't want him taking away one of the only good things in my life, Professor."

Professor Snape sighed. "Fine." Harry began to smile before he cut that off with an additional, "But with one condition. I am the potions master at this school. You leave the _box_ in my office so I may talk to those two when I need to. You are to report to me after breakfast each morning to take your... _shot_... so I may do it for you. It's a lot harder to do it on yourself and you can hurt yourself badly by doing it. I'm surprised you haven't hurt yourself yet."

Harry screwed his face up in distaste before consenting. "Yeah, I can do that."

"Good."

Harry paused to check his hand, seeing it healed. He showed it to Professor Snape who carefully examined the hand. "You're free to go." Harry smiled widely before bounding off towards the exit, waving back at the Professor for a moment on his way out the door.

_Idiotic brat._


End file.
